Insights

Why a humble tin of baked beans might be an unlikely starting point for understanding artist identity, creativity and building an audience.

One of the subjects I spend a considerable amount of time discussing with emerging musicians is branding. It's also one of the subjects that tends to generate the most confusion, partly because the word itself can feel rather uncomfortable when applied to something as personal and creative as making music. Artists don't necessarily want to think of themselves as brands, and I can understand why. The idea can suggest something manufactured, overly commercial or disconnected from the reasons somebody started writing songs in the first place. However, branding doesn't have to mean any of those things. When approached properly, it can help artists develop a much clearer understanding of who they are, what they're trying to communicate and how they might establish a meaningful relationship with an audience.

During my artist development sessions at the Royal Northern College of Music, I sometimes begin a discussion about branding with something rather less glamorous than a musician: a tin of Heinz baked beans. It's an exercise that usually raises a few smiles, but there's a serious point behind it. Most people can recognise a tin of Heinz baked beans almost immediately, often without needing to read the name. The colours, typography, packaging and decades of accumulated associations have created something instantly familiar. We might have opinions about the quality, the price or whether a supermarket alternative tastes just as good, but the brand itself is firmly established in our minds. That recognition has been developed through years of consistency, repetition and a clear understanding of how the product should be presented to consumers. Of course, musicians aren't tins of baked beans, and I wouldn't suggest that developing an artistic identity should follow exactly the same principles as selling food. Nevertheless, the exercise introduces an important question: what makes something recognisable, and why do we develop attachments to certain things over others? For musicians, this becomes particularly interesting because music is an emotional experience. Music becomes associated with relationships, places, memories, personal experiences and different periods of our lives. We form attachments to artists because something about their work connects with us, sometimes in ways that are difficult to articulate. The most compelling artists often create a world that audiences want to enter, one that extends beyond the recordings themselves. Their music, imagery, performances, personality and wider cultural references combine to establish a recognisable identity. This doesn't necessarily happen through a carefully constructed marketing campaign. Sometimes it develops instinctively, but even artists whose identities appear effortless have usually made a series of creative decisions that contribute to how they're perceived.

I sometimes think artist management is one of the strangest jobs in the music industry. You can spend months, sometimes years, helping somebody build a career, negotiating deals, organising tours, managing relationships and generally keeping everything moving, only to discover that much of what you've done is either invisible or taken for granted. That's not necessarily a complaint. A good manager should be working behind the scenes, and the artist should be the person receiving the attention. But the nature of the relationship means managers can become extraordinarily invested in somebody else's ambitions, sometimes at considerable cost to their own wellbeing, finances and personal lives. I've experienced the rewarding side of that relationship, and I've also experienced what happens when things go badly wrong.

One particular period stands out. I was managing several artists, all at different stages of development, and things were becoming increasingly busy. One band had an album approaching, another artist had recently secured a recording agreement, and a third project was generating considerable industry excitement. On paper, it was exactly the sort of situation a manager might hope to find themselves in. I was also working in higher education and had a family at home, so the practical reality was rather less glamorous than it might have appeared from the outside.

Class, equity and what we want music funding to achieve

I spend a lot of my working life talking to developing artists, whether through education, mentoring, management or simply conversations with musicians trying to work out what to do next. Increasingly, funding comes into those conversations. There is money available to support new music in the UK through organisations such as Arts Council England, PRS Foundation, Help Musicians and Youth Music, alongside regional programmes and funds designed to address particular inequalities. Yet the more I encounter this landscape, the more I find myself wondering about a fairly fundamental question: what exactly do we want music funding to do?

I've used the 70/20/10 rule when talking to artists about marketing for years, and eventually I liked the principle enough to name my consultancy after it. My version is pretty simple: roughly 70% of what an artist communicates should reveal personality, 20% should be sharing and engaging with the world around them, and only 10% should be directly selling something. So the majority is who you are, what interests you, what you stand for, what influences you and why you make the music you make. The 20% might be other artists, records you love, books, films, places, people you're working with or things you've discovered. Then there's the 10%: stream my song, buy my ticket, come to my show, pre order the record.

There is a thread running through Japanese culture that I became increasingly aware of while I was there, from temples, shrines and traditional imagery through to Studio Ghibli, Pokémon, gaming, anime and contemporary music. Seeing Ado at Summer Sonic and then spending the following couple of weeks travelling around Japan made me think about those connections far more than I had before. I'm 57, so I didn't grow up with Pokémon and I've never played the games. My route into this world has been different. I've become increasingly interested in Studio Ghibli, Japanese film and, inevitably, Japanese music. Perhaps that's why some of the connections struck me so strongly. Rather than growing up with Pokémon and later discovering the culture behind it, I've almost done it backwards. I've spent time in Japan looking at temples, shrines, landscapes and older imagery and then started recognising echoes of those things in the contemporary culture around me.

I have to admit that when I first heard the term "indie poo", I laughed. I knew immediately what it was getting at. There's a particular strand of British guitar music around at the moment that can feel incredibly familiar: the clothes, the references, the vocals, the guitars, the obvious influence of Oasis and other bands that came before them. The phrase was apparently coined on TikTok earlier this year and, like most good insults, it works because you immediately understand the caricature.

The more I've thought about it, though, the less I like it. In fact, I don't like it at all.